Best Lawyers® listed me for my Ethics and Professional Responsibility Law practice. Ethics and Professional Responsibility Law, aka the Law of Lawyering, represents a small part of my practice—which focuses most heavily on business, real estate, elder law, and fiduciary work—but it’s a part of my practice I’m very proud of. (For more on what this area of law is all about, read Ethics Law

In part my law practice involves ethics law. The term fairly describes the practice area, but Law of Lawyering more completely defines it. Simply, I focus on issues which arise for lawyers as they practice law.*

The Rules of Professional Conduct govern lawyer conduct. The American Bar Association published Model Rules of Professional Conduct in the 1980s, to replace its Code of Professional Responsibility. Arizona had adopted the Code in 1970 and replaced it with its version of the ABA Model Rules in 1985. (For an excellent history of lawyer ethics in Arizona read The Short History of Arizona Legal Ethics by Keith Swisher.)

Malpractice is a term synonymous with professional negligence. Although one sounds ugly and the other doesn’t, they have the same meaning. And that meaning? Per The Free Dictionary

Malpractice refers to negligence or misconduct by a professional person, such as a lawyer, a doctor, a dentist, or an accountant. The failure to meet the standard of care … that is recognized by a profession reaches the level of malpractice when a client or patient is damaged because of error.

Some appellate court opinions—and yours truly—nibble at the edges of this definition but, for our purposes, it suffices.